RECENTLY I had the pleasure of making one of the most welcome announcements on the floor of The Scottish Parliament I have ever had the honour of delivering.
It was that a deal had just been signed for Sainsburys to stock fresh West Coast Langoustines on every fresh fish counter at its supermarkets throughout the UK and that these would be supplied by the Mallaig and North West Fishermen’s Association.
This followed a meeting I had arranged more than a year earlier between the association and Richard Lochhead, then, as now, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for fisheries (among other responsibilities).
At that meeting in the West Highland Hotel in Mallaig, Association chairman John MacAlister and his colleagues presented a well-argued case for support in marketing their catch to new UK markets.
A key part of that presentation was the fact that theirs was a sustainable fishery – the amount harvested from the sea was below a level that would endanger the population of prawns and langoustines in the waters off the West Coast.
Another was that their landings are highly prized in Europe and were traditionally loaded onto containers bound for markets in Southern Europe, bypassing the UK consumer.
Richard agreed to do what he could to help market this most prized of catches to the UK market and this was swiftly followed by the creation of The Scottish Langoustine Project and funding from Marine Scotland allowed detailed analysis of the viability of supplying nephrops from the West Coast to major UK retailers.
This included detailed supply chain research that ultimately meant that talks could be opened with supermarkets on their terms and the result of this was the major contract with Sainsburys I was thrilled to be able to announce in Parliament a few weeks ago.
The next major step in this process will be the landing of the first catches specifically allocated to the Sainsburys contract and I am told this is imminent.
I believe the importance of this process born from that meeting in Mallaig last year goes far beyond a bit of extra cash for a handful of fishermen; it also gives enough stability to the area’s fishing community to allow confidence for investment in new on-shore facilities and I was delighted to hear that this new confidence had already resulted in new vocational training for the next generation who will fish the Minch and surrounding waters.
But further than this, I believe that other rural food producers in the West Highlands and beyond will look upon what the West Coast fisherman have been able to achieve as an example of how they too can take their high quality produce to the wider UK market.
So what may have appeared back in September last year to be a talking shop or cheap photocall in Mallaig was actually the foundation of a new initiative to help a key sector of the West Highland economy to step up to a secure new level and also an example to other sectors of the rural economy of what is possible if the right steps are taken.
The Sainsburys contract was a huge result for the new Scottish Langoustines Project but I am not alone in hoping that this will soon be followed by other similar deals with other major retailers. Watch this space.
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